vCenter Server

VMware vCenter Server provides a centralized management platform for VMware hypervisors. To manage your VMware environment with Turbonomic, you specify a vCenter Server instance as a target. Turbonomic discovers the infrastructure that target manages, and links it into a supply chain to deliver application performance management.

Prerequisites

General considerations

Before you configure a vCenter Server target, you should consider the following:

  • Linked vCenters

    For linked vCenters, you must add each vCenter Server separately so Turbonomic can communicate with each vCenter Server through a separate API endpoint.

  • Restricting Turbonomic Access to Specific Clusters

    When you add a vCenter Server target, Turbonomic discovers all of the connected entities that are visible, based on the target account that it uses to connect to the vCenter Server target. If you have clusters or other entities you want to exclude from discovery, you can use the vSphere management client to the role of the Turbonomic account to No access for the given entities.

  • Shared Datastores

    If you add more than one vCenter Server target that manages the same datastore, you can enable or disable datastore browsing to discover wasted files on the shared datastore:

    • Enable datastore browsing:

      To properly enable browsing, you must turn on the Enable Datastore Browsing option in the target configuration for each vCenter Server target that manages the shared datastore.

    • Disable datastore browsing:

      If you don't want datastore browsing over shared datastores, you must turn off the Enable Datastore Browsing option in the target configuration for each vCenter Server target that manages the shared datastore.

    If set Enable Datastore Browsing differently for separate targets that manage the same datastore, datastore browsing can give inconsistent results for active and wasted files.

  • VSAN Permissions

    In order to enable VSAN support and discover groups based on storage profiles, you must ensure that the user role Turbonomic is assigned has the Profile-driven storage view permission enabled. This permission is disabled in the built-in readonly role.

  • Guest Metrics

    Enable Guest Metrics is enabled by default for all vCenter Server targets added to Turbonomic.
    Note:

    If your vCenter Server target was added prior to 8.7.3, this option is enabled as part of the update.

    This target option instructs that Turbonomic request from the VC instance that it start collecting and reporting enhanced memory metrics from each virtual machine, using the VMware Tools installed on each VM. Without this option, Turbonomic only has access to the "Active" memory for each virtual machine, which is a less accurate representation of the memory that the VM is really using.

    For accurate metrics use vCenter Server 6.5 U3 or higher with VMware Tools version 10.3.2 or higher on guest VMs. If you run vCenter Server version 7.0 or greater, then it can automatically update your VMware Tools through the user interface. For other versions of vCenter Server, you must manually update your VMware Tools deployments.

    For the permissions required for Guest Metrics, see vCenter Permissions.

  • VMware Cloud Deployments

    VMware Cloud (VMC) is a managed cloud offering that provides dedicated VMware vSphere-based Software Defined Data Centers (SDDC). VMC on AWS hosts SDDC on AWS facilities. For on-premise VMC, SDDC runs on specific hardware that meets VMware specifications.

    VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure VMware Services, Google Cloud VMware Engine, IBM Cloud for VMware and other cloud hosted VMware solutions are treated like any other VMware integration. The same familiar Turbonomic experience can be expected when using the VMware vCenter Server target integration against any vCenter Server target whether it is cloud hosted or not, provided you pay close attention to satisfying all of the vCenter target prerequisites, especially permissions and roles. For example, VMware Cloud bare metal host instances may be modeled in Turbonomic as Hyperconverged templates, assigned a cost, and used to plan the migrating from existing on-premises host clusters to cloud hosted VMware solutions. Once in the cloud, you can use Turbonomic to plan migrations from one cloud hosted VMware solution to another. Provision and Suspend Host actions generated by Turbonomic may be more readily actionable on cloud hosted VMware solutions and automated using custom Action Scripts if required. If you have any requirements or improvements that relate specifically to cloud hosted VMware solutions, submit an enhancement request through IBM Ideas for future consideration.

    For VMC environments, you can use the Turbonomic vCenter Server target to manage workloads, but you should be aware of the following concerns:

    • DRS Settings

      VMC SDDC requires DRS to be set to migration level 3. You cannot change this setting.

    • Datacenter Names

      VMC SDDC datacenter names are always SDDC Datacenter. This is true even for multiple VMC targets. You can use the Target Name filter to search and group VMs across the set of VMC SDDC datacenters and clusters that share this name.

    • Discovery

      • Turbonomic does not discover VMC service costs or subscription details.

      • The user interface does not show cost savings or investments.

    • Migration Plans

      Plans do not discover VMC bare metal hosts. You can use Turbonomic HCI Host Templates to represent the bare metal instances. Then the plan can determine the number of VMC instances you need to support your existing on-premise workloads.

      Migrate to Cloud plans do not support VMC.

Adding vCenter Server targets

Note:

This topic describes features that are available in the new design of the user interface. This new design is enabled by default. If you switched to the legacy design, click New Feature Toggle button in the navigation bar of the user interface and then turn on the toggle to re-enable the new design. For more information, see New Design for the User Interface.

  1. Click Settings > Target Configuration.

  2. On the Target configuration page, click Add Target.

  3. On the Select target page, click vCenter.

  4. In the side panel, review the connection requirements and then click Connect Target.

  5. Configure the following settings:

    • Address

      Specify the fully qualified domain name or IP address of the vCenter Server.

    • Username

      Specify the username of the account Turbonomic uses to connect to the target.

      Include the domain if required (<domain>\<username>).

    • Password

      Specify the password of the account Turbonomic uses to connect to the target.

      Note:

      The password cannot contain any of the following special characters: \ / " [ ] : | < > + = ; , ? * , ' tab space @

    • Discover unused storage

      If this option is selected, Turbonomic discovers unused storage.

    • Enable guest metrics (vSphere 6.5U3+)

      If this option is selected, Turbonomic collects advanced guest memory metrics that increase the accuracy of the VMEM data that Turbonomic uses for analysis of virtual machines. Guest metrics are only supported on vCenter Server Server version 6.5U3 or later. Guest VMs must run VMware Tools 10.3.2 Build 10338 or later.

      To enable guest metrics, ensure the following:

      • VMware Tools is installed and running on the target VMs.

      • The user account has the Performance.Modify Intervals performance privilege.

      For more information, see vCenter Performance Privileges.

    • Certificate authority

      Specify the root certificate for validating the SSL connection to vCenter storage arrays.

Note:

If your VMware hypervisors are running in a Nutanix environment, you must understand pinning a Nutanix Controller VM. For more information, see Pinning Controller VMs in Generic Hypervisor Mode.

vCenter Server imported settings

In addition to discovering entities managed by the hypervisor, Turbonomic also imports a wide range of vSphere settings, such as Host DRS rules, annotations, Resource Pools, and DRS HA settings (See Other Information Imported From vCenter).

Note:

Turbonomic does not import Storage DRS rules at this time.

VMware vSphere 6.0 introduced the ability to move VMs between vCenters. If you enabled this feature in your VMware environment, you can configure Turbonomic to include cross vCenter Server vMotions in its recommendations. You must create a Workload Placement Policy that merges the data centers on the different vCenters, and then another policy to merge the given clusters.

For vCenter environments, you can create placement policies that merge data centers to support cross-vCenter moves. In this case, where a data center corresponds to a vCenter target, the merged clusters can be in different data centers. In this case, you must create two merge policies; one to merge the affected data centers, and another to merge the specific clusters.

To create a Merge policy:

  1. In the Policy Management tab, select Placement Policy.

  2. For Type, select Merge.

  3. For Merge, choose the merge type, and click Select.

  4. Choose the specific data centers or clusters to merge in this policy, then click Select.

  5. Click Save Policy.

Note:

Since Turbonomic can only execute vMotions between clusters that use the same switch type (VSS or VDS), make sure any clusters you merge use the same switch type. Although Turbonomic will not initiate VSS → VDS vMotions, vSphere may do so. If this happens, Turbonomic displays a compliance violation notification.

Monitored resources

Turbonomic monitors the following resources:

  • Virtual Machine

    • Energy

      Energy is the measurement of electricity used by a given entity over a period of time, expressed in watt-hours (Wh).

    • Carbon footprint

      Carbon footprint is the measurement of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions for a given entity. Turbonomic measures carbon footprint in grams.

    • Virtual CPU (vCPU)

      Virtual CPU is the measurement of CPU that is in use.

    • Virtual memory (vMem)

      Virtual memory (vMem) is the measurement of memory that is in use.

    • Virtual storage

      Virtual ssorage is the measurement of virtual storage capacity that is in use.

    • Storage access (IOPS)

      Storage access, also known as IOPS, is the per-second measurement of read and write access operations on a storage entity.

    • Latency

      Latency is the measurement of storage latency.

  • Host

    • Energy

      Energy is the measurement of electricity used by a given entity over a period of time, expressed in watt-hours (Wh).

    • Power

      Power is the measurement of electricity consumed by a given entity, expressed in watts.

    • Carbon footprint

      Carbon footprint is the measurement of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions for a given entity. Turbonomic measures carbon footprint in grams.

    • Memory (Mem)

      Memory is the measurement of memory that is reserved or in use.

    • CPU

      CPU is the measurement of CPU that is reserved or in use.

    • IO

      IO is the utilization of a host's IO adapters.

    • Net

      Net is the utilization of data through the host's network adapters.

    • Swap

      Swap is the measurement of a host's swap space that is in use.

    • Balloon

      Balloon is the measurement of memory that is shared by VMs running on a host.

      This commodity applies to ESX only.

    • CPU ready

      CPU ready is the measurement of a host's ready queue capacity that is in use.

      This commodity applies to ESX only.

  • Storage

    • Storage amount

      Storage amount is the measurement of storage capacity that is in use.

    • Storage provisioned

      Storage provisioned is the utilization of the entity's capacity, including overprovisioning.

    • Storage access (IOPS)

      Storage access, also known as IOPS, is the per-second measurement of read and write access operations on a storage entity.

      Note:

      When it generates actions, Turbonomic does not consider IOPS throttling that it discovers on storage entities. Analysis uses the IOPS it discovers on Logical Pool or Disk Array entities.

    • Latency

      Latency is the measurement of storage latency.

    • Unattached files

      Unattached files are files that are not currently connected to a virtual machine.

  • Datacenter

    Note:

    For datacenter entities, Turbonomic does not monitor resources directly from the datacenter, but from the hosts in the datacenter. See host monitored resources for details.

  • Provider Virtual Datacenter

    • Memory (Mem)

      Memory is the measurement of memory that is reserved or in use.

    • CPU

      CPU is the measurement of CPU that is reserved or in use.

    • Storage

      Storage is the utilization of the storage attached to the entity.

  • Consumer Virtual Datacenter

    • Memory (Mem)

      Memory is the measurement of memory that is reserved or in use.

    • CPU

      CPU is the measurement of CPU that is reserved or in use.

    • Storage

      Storage is the utilization of the storage attached to the entity.

Actions

In order to execute cross-vCenter migrations as a non-admin user, you must have the following permissions enabled for the user account in both the current and destination vCenter servers:

Entity Permissions
Virtual Machine Edit Inventory, Create From Existing (Move, Register, Remove, Unregister sub-options), Create New
Datacenter Reconfigure Datacenter
Network Assign Network

Turbonomic supports the following actions:

  • Virtual Machine

    • Start

    • Move

    • Move VM Storage

    • Suspend

    • Resize Up/Down

    • Terminate

      This action can only be executed outside Turbonomic.

    • Provision

      This action can only be executed outside Turbonomic.

    • Reconfigure

      This action can only be executed outside Turbonomic.

  • Host

    • Start

    • Suspend

    • Terminate

      This action can only be executed outside Turbonomic.

    • Provision

      This action can only be executed outside Turbonomic.

  • Storage

    • Delete unattached file

      Any file that has not been modified in the period defined in the storage policy. The default behavior is to generate an action after 15 consecutive days of non-use.

    • Provision

      This action can only be executed outside Turbonomic.